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Soon: High-Stakes Hearing In Case Of Man Deported In "Error"; Trump Admin Argues It Cannot Return Man Deported To Salvadoran Prison Due To "Administrative Error"; Trump Admin Fires NSA Director And Deputy Director; Fed Chair Warns Tariffs Could Drive Up Inflation, Slow Growth; One-On-One With Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired April 04, 2025 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[12:31:57]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Any moment, the Trump administration will face a judge for the first time since admitting it deported a Maryland resident to a Salvadorian prison by mistake. At the hearing in a federal court in Maryland, Kilmar Abrego Garcia's attorneys will argue for his return to the United States.

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is covering the case and joins us from outside the courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland. What do you expect in that courtroom today, Priscilla?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Dana, this hearing is going to start in the next half hour or so. And Abrego Garcia's lawyers are going to request that the administration bring him back to the United States. Of course, this case has gained considerable significance because the administration earlier in the week admitted that they had deported this man because of, quote, "administrative error".

Now, so far, the administration has said in court filings that it cannot retrieve him from El Salvador because he is in the custody of another country. They have also said in these filings that, quote, "The public interest outweighs the individual interest when it comes to retrieving them".

What they mean by that is the administration is maintaining that he has ties to the gang MS-13. Vice President JD Vance himself also saying this on X over the course of the week, saying that he is a criminal. The Salvadoran national, therefore, should not be returned.

Now, I have gone through the court filings not only in this case, but also in this man's immigration proceedings from 2019. And while, yes, there was an allegation of MS-13 by the local police department in 2019, there was no further evidence after the fact to make or to prove that.

And ultimately, and this is key to this hearing as well, the immigration judge granted him withholding of removal. That means that he had protected status in the United States. He could not be removed to El Salvador for fear of persecution.

He could be removed, just not to El Salvador. And that is exactly what happened in this case. He is now being held at the notorious prison in El Salvador. His family making a plea this morning for his return, including his wife, who is a U.S. citizen. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

JENNIFER VASQUEZ SURA, WIFE OF KILMAR ABREGO GARCIA: My entire family is broken by what a nice words in error.

Kilmar, if you can hear me, I miss you so much. And I'm doing the best to fight for you and our children.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

ALVAREZ: Now, his wife has not spoken to her husband, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, since he was deported in mid-March. She is expected to be in the courtroom today as, again, his lawyers push for the administration to return him.

Unclear whether we'll get a ruling, but this has become a significant case, as there have been so many stories over the last several weeks of people sent to this prison, who perhaps shouldn't have been there to begin with. Dana?

BASH: Priscilla, thank you so much. Appreciate that reporting.

[12:35:02]

And markets are plunging. Allies are panicking. How are Democrats pushing back against President Trump's sweeping tariffs? I'll speak one-on-one with the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer after a break.

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BASH: President Trump fired the two top officials at the National Security Agency last night after a meeting with conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. Now, Loomer is a far-right activist who promotes theories like QAnon. She once claimed that 9/11 was an inside job.

[12:40:07]

Sources have told CNN that during the meeting, Loomer encouraged the President to fire the director and deputy for being disloyal. The Trump administration also fired several staff members on the National Security Council.

The President defended his meeting with Loomer while speaking to reporters on Air Force One.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Laura Loomer is a very good patriot. She is a very strong person. And I saw her yesterday for a little while, and she makes recommendations of things and people. And sometimes I listen to those recommendations like I do with everybody.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: CNN's Alayna Treene is here with me now. Alayna, you have been on the reporting team looking into this. And I know one of the things that you've learned is that Loomer brought with her a list of what, about a dozen names to her meeting with Donald Trump that she wanted out?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: That's essentially right. So she met with the President. I wouldn't say one-on-one. Well, it was supposed to be one-on-one, but there were other people in the room like National Security Adviser Michael Waltz. And she brought this list.

And you're right. The sources I spoke with said it had about a dozen names on them of people that she believed were disloyal to the President and wanted to fire. Now, it's hard to overstate how big a deal firing the top two people at the NSA is.

Timothy Haugh, he's the director. His deputy, Wendy Noble. Haugh is someone who, of course, was Senate-confirmed. He also ran U.S. Cyber Command. But the thing that she mentioned about him specifically, the director of the NSA, was that he was someone that Milley brought in himself.

We know that the former Joint Chiefs of Staff, someone who worked closely with President Trump as well, has been someone that the President now very much dislikes. That was something I was told behind the scenes that was a reasoning for that particular dismissal.

All to say, though, I think if you take a step back and you look at the context of this and the significance of it, I mean, Laura Loomer is someone who did actually have a lot of access to the President on the campaign. She flew with him a couple times on his private plane.

But that was something that really got under the skin and was a big concern for top people -- his top campaign officials, including then- campaign manager Susie Wiles, who is now, of course, the President's chief of staff.

She and others kind of put the kibosh on that during the campaign. So it's fascinating that now she's sort of having that access once again. And that's really the key question, is how did she even get this meeting with the President?

And then, of course, you know, he believed in her enough and had the -- she had the influence enough to get him to actually go ahead with some of these names and move ahead with firing them.

BASH: A conspiracy theorist gets into the Oval Office, shows the President a list of 12 names, and many of them are fired just because he says that she says that they are disloyal. That's pretty remarkable. Alayna, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Coming up, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will be here to talk about the President's trade war and more. Don't go anywhere.

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[12:47:29]

BASH: With stocks plummeting and markets in turmoil, President Trump is sounding defiant, insisting his sweeping tariffs are going very well. He's promising that his policies, quote," will never change". Not sure that Wall Street is understanding that as a positive because we have been showing what is going on there.

Joining me now with a response to all of this from Capitol Hill is the Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. Senator Schumer, thank you so much for being here. We are seeing --

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D), MINORITY LEADER: Hi, Dana.

BASH: -- a historic rout on Wall Street. The Fed chair just warned that these tariffs could drive inflation back up, hurt growth. How worried are you that all of this could push the U.S. economy into a recession?

SCHUMER: I'm very worried about it, Dana. This is one of the most disastrous and poorly thought-out policies that the Trump administration has done thus far, and that's saying a lot. First, the disaster to American families is dramatic.

It's estimated the average family, it'll cost them $5,000 more a year, and that means that's the price of everything, whether it's groceries or drugs or food or clothing or cars or gas or building a home, goes way up. And what does that mean? There's less money for the economy, and that's what makes a recession so, so much more likely than it was before Trump did this.

Now the estimates are as high as 30 percent, 40 percent by the financial institutions. Second, what it does is it makes everybody just worry about spending money. Businesses like certainty. And when there's no certainty, because Donald Trump has been so erratic, businesses hold back on spending, on training, on hiring people.

Consumers say, hey, I'm not going to be able to afford that one trip. We've been saving for to visit grandma or buy the new car. And it's so poorly done. Do you know, Dana, this policy taxes penguins but not Putin, because the herd and McDonald Islands are in the tax. All they have is penguins.

BASH: Yes.

SCHUMER: He leaves Putin alone.

BASH: Yes -- SCHUMER: It's crazy. It's poorly thought out, but most of all, it's a

disaster. There's one more point. Why is he doing this? To give tax breaks to his billionaire friends.

They are all in that billionaire bubble. They just talk to themselves, and they don't know how badly they're hurting average American families.

BASH: Well, let me sort of ask a follow up on that, because what Donald Trump has argued for decades is that it's about fairness and it's about helping American manufacturing. In particular, helping blue collar jobs and workers and American businesses in the U.S. This is what he says.

[12:50:14]

And he actually has support right now in this current climate, in this current policy from the UAW. They called his auto tariffs a, quote, "return to policies" that prioritize workers who build this country rather than the greed of ruthless corporations. The UAW, obviously, is historically a key Democratic constituency. Are they wrong here?

SCHUMER: No. Look, there are certain tariffs that pinpointed, careful, aimed at things that other countries are doing badly at us. Makes sense. This is not that. This is across the board. 10 percent on everything in addition to what other tariffs he's put on.

BASH: What about the auto tariffs in particular?

SCHUMER: And so it affects everything. Well, look, you have to look at it in the whole context of things. When there's such chaos in America, I think fewer Americans are going to buy cars, American cars or otherwise, because it's so chaotically done. So I think it hurts everybody.

BASH: So this big union organization, UAW, on this, they just -- they don't have it right?

SCHUMER: Look, I respect them. But the tariffs, if they wanted to do something about auto, should have been much more pinpointed and isolated than this massive assault on American families, all to help the billionaires.

That's why the -- he's using this tariff money to further cut taxes on billionaires. And that's what we're talking about on the floor of the Senate right now.

BASH: The veteran Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, they have introduced a bill, bipartisan bill, to require congressional approval for any new tariffs. And I'm sure you saw that Grassley said it's necessary to reassert Congress's constitutional role and ensure Congress has a voice in trade policy. Is that going to pass?

SCHUMER: Look, it has good bipartisan support. I think it's a very good bill. It's the first time we have seen some Republicans buck Donald Trump. They've all too often gone along with him, even when they know his policies are dead wrong.

So I welcome it. And I hope it could it could pass. It's a bipartisan bill. And it shows you how bad these tariffs are. When even Republicans who have been so afraid to break with Trump, some of the leading Republicans are. And they deserve some credit for that on this bill.

BASH: I want to take a step back and play a moment from your colleague, Cory Booker, and one of the many, many things he said during his marathon floor speech this week.

SCHUMER: Yes.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D), NEW JERSEY: I confess that I've been inadequate to the moment. I confess that the Democratic Party has made terrible mistakes. That it gave in lane to this demagogue. I confess we all must look in the mirror and say we will do better.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BASH: Senator, I don't need to tell you that some in the Democratic base, some rank and file voters are still concerned about your leadership. They're still kind of sore about you voting for the government staying open, voting with Republicans, including, you know, supporting the President on that.

Have you taken the criticisms to heart? And if so, how are you changing your approach now and going forward?

SCHUMER: Well, first, what Cory did was incredible and deserves huge credit. Not only the stamina he showed the 25 hours and I talked to him and worked with him before beforehand the preparation. But what he said was great.

Yes, of course, Democrats, we are now focused on the future. And we are focused on showing how awful this administration is. So on the floor today, you're going to see a whole series of amendments that talk about how devastating the cuts would be on Medicaid, how devastating on Social Security, how devastating on food, how devastating on a security.

We're going to talk about all their self-dealing. And you're going to find all of us, Cory, myself and the whole Democratic Party united on what to do and going forward and going after Trump day in, day out, showing the American people that Trump has betrayed them, that he's broken his promises and that we're on the side of working people and he's on the side of the billionaire.

So, yes, we are all united in moving forward in that regard. And Cory's speech pointed us in that direction. And it's great.

BASH: I do, before I let you go, want to ask about a report in the Columbus dispatch that says Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Moreno told -- SCHUMER: Yes.

BASH: -- people that Democrats are, quote, "monolithic sheep that follow the Fuhrer Schumer's orders". What's your reaction to being called a Fuhrer by a fellow senator?

SCHUMER: This is vicious, nasty and anti-Semitic, plain and simple. You know, I'm the highest Jewish ranking official in America. And I lost people, lots of people to the Holocaust, to this vicious man, Hitler, who killed 6 million Jews.

[12:55:08]

It is outrageous what he did. It is anti-Semitic what he did. He ought to renounce his own comments. But where are the Republicans denouncing this vicious anti-Semitism? It is so brutal, especially to those of us who've lost someone, and many in my family, to that horrible man, Hitler.

BASH: Senator, thank you so much. I believe -- control room, tell me, do we have time?

OK, we do have a little bit more time. And before I let you go --

SCHUMER: OK.

BASH: -- I just want to ask, as a member of the so-called Gang of Eight, how you feel about the fact that Laura Loomer, she's a right- wing activist, got into the Oval Office with a list of names and asked the President to fire people, and he apparently has done so, including top people at the National Security Agency.

SCHUMER: It's like the inmate running the asylum. Laura Loomer is one of the most extreme MAGA conspiracy theorists there is. She says that 9/11 -- that rather January 6th was an inside job, and he's listening to her. This shows how low this administration goes.

And it's all catching up with them, as we saw in Wisconsin. It's all catching up with them.

BASH: Senator, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it. I know you're going to have a very long night.

SCHUMER: Bye-bye.

BASH: Thank you.

SCHUMER: Thank you. Good to be with you, Dana.

BASH: And thank you so much for joining Inside Politics. Hope you have a terrific weekend. CNN News Central starts after the break.

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